Robin Chapman posts a poem, most days, from fellow poets with one of her watercolors.

1/14/2012

American Life in Poetry: Column 355

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Here’s an experience that I’d guess most of the men who read this column have had, getting into a rental tuxedo. Bill Trowbridge, a poet from Missouri, does a fine job of picturing that particular initiation rite.

Rental Tux

It chafed like some new skin we’d grown,or feathers, the cummerbund and starched collarpinching us to show how real this transformationinto princes was, how powerful we’d grownby getting drivers’ licenses, how tall and totalour new perspective, above that rusty keyholeparents squinted through. We’d found the key:that nothing really counts except a romancebright as Technicolor, wide as Cinerama,and this could be the night. No lie.